Peter Constable wrote:

> In reference to what I wrote in Nov 2001, I used "syllabic" to refer to
> scripts in which the graphic symbolization corresponded to a
> phonological syllable. Note that I distinguished "syllabic" and
> "syllabary", the latter being a sub-type (along with abugida) of scripts
> that are structurally "syllabic". I certainly had no intention of
> suggesting a classification in which Tamil is considered a syllabary.

Check any history of writing since Taylor's!

I had to disentangle the syllabaries and the "neosyllabaries" in order
to realize what was going on. Even Février failed to make the discovery
-- and I consider him the most insightful of the historians of writing.
Fred Householder came closest (but he went and called them
"pseudo-alphabet" -- at least it gets away from "syllabary"!).
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...